Wilde Stories 2018

by Steve Berman

  He had to go slow. Had to be careful, letting himself into the cashier’s safety booth, searching around, his breaths filling his ears in dragging rasps loud as an astronaut on a spacewalk. He paused under the eye of the security camera, held up his skeleton key, and sketched the sign of the eye in the air with his fingertip. Just so the shop owner wouldn’t freak out, when they reviewed the security tapes in the morning.

  Then he pocketed the key and moved on.

  The back storeroom was next. With every room he checked, that crackling sensation grew fainter while his unease grew stronger, like the crack was baiting him with a game of hot and cold. Colder, it said as he rummaged among shelves and crates and boxes. Colder, colder…

  Until he found the door in the back of the storeroom, and that charge shot from his feet right to his scalp, stinging in his nose worse than plucking a hair, burning in his eyes like a handful of grit, wet quarters and blood on his tongue.

  Warmer, that jolt mocked. Getting warmer.

  He tried the doorknob, then jerked back with a hiss. Hot—hot as if a fire raged on the other side, but he smelled no smoke. Only ozone, and the tang of his own terrified sweat.

  He pulled the sleeve of his hoodie down over his hand, then tried again—gingerly, gingerly. The door swung open on darkened stairs. He fumbled for the light switch on the wall and flicked it on, illuminating narrow, stained stucco walls and pitted concrete steps covered in a fur coat of dirty fuzz. No one had been up here in a while.

  “Hello?” he called anyway.

  A voice responded.

  His stomach lurched up, slammed into the bottoms of his lungs, punched the air out of them, and sank back down. He flattened his damp palms against his thighs, curled them, knotted up furrows in his jeans, made himself let go. Calm the fuck down. Might be someone living up here after all. But if there was, they weren’t answering; he couldn’t make out more than a low mumble. Sounded like singing, humming under their breath. He recognized that kind of hum—earbuds in, head down, busy. They didn’t even know he was here. Minding their own business, and he was fixing to bust in and fuck up their night.

  Better than letting them get swallowed up.

  He knocked on the walls as he climbed the steps, rapping firmly and raising his voice loud enough, he hoped, to be heard over headphones. “Hello?” he called again. “If you can hear me, don’t be scared.” It came out skeert. “Just doing inspections. Checking out a vibe.”

  Still no answer; only that humming and bopping, voice oddly familiar.

  “Promise I’ll be in and out, sure as shitting,” he tried, then winced. Gam would’ve popped the back of his head for cussing in front of ordinary citizens, when he had a job to do. But he was nervous as fuck. Every step brought him closer to fucking puking, the charge was so thick here. So thick even a daysider should’ve been able to feel it, the kind of premonition even the insensitive got, something warning them away. Why the hell hadn’t they booked it the fuck out of here?

  “Sorry,” he said as he crested the stairs, and leaned around the wall to peek into the second floor. “I cuss when I get nervous, and I think maybe I need to get you gone ’cause I’m picking up some serious bad shit—”

  He nearly fell back down the stairs.

  The second floor had been bisected down the middle into day and night. The half closest to the stairs was shadow and night and stacked boxes, some taped up and scribbled with illegible Sharpie words, some pried open with old newspaper and random shit popping out, all of it covered in dust. The other half was lamplit, golden, filled with all the warmth in the world—a cozy living room full of plush furniture in beige linen draped over with colorful patterned throws, potted plants in the corners, wooden statues crouching on shelves and watching over the place, a shriveled leaf of cabbage nailed up over an open doorway leading into another hallway.

  A boy sat on the couch, wearing a red hoodie with Fresh Waffles printed on the chest, earbuds in his ears, the cord trailing into his pockets. A skinny rawboned boy with that look of someone waiting for one more growth spurt to round out his sharp edges; a Black boy with a cut to his lids that made his eyes taper sly, pucker at the corners, angle up at the edges; a compact, self-contained boy with a point to his chin Asad had always hated because it made him look like he was sassing off even when he wasn’t. A boy Asad would know anywhere.

  Because that boy was him.

  Through a shimmering, crackling barrier like a wall of water transfused into rippling film, he was looking at his own fucking self.

  His throat slammed shut. He couldn’t feel his body, but he knew he’d fallen because he was suddenly on eye level with a coffee table that cut off in the middle of a decorative bowl of polished stones, ending where it met the filmed barrier. That wasn’t a crack. It was a fucking hole, and Asad should be drawing the runes and screaming for Tarif and calling his Gam, but all he did was thud down on his butt and stare at himself like he was looking in a goddamned mirror.

  Except in that mirror, he was no longer sunken-eyed and hollow. In that mirror, he no longer had the ashen undertone to his skin from never seeing the sun, his skin so rich and dark a brown he glowed, smooth and suede-soft. His other self’s knuckles weren’t white with dried, thickened skin. His other self’s cheeks weren’t concave caverns of exhaustion. His other self’s clothing was scuffed and torn from natural wear and tear, instead of years of growing into and growing out of and stretching them thin at the seams until they were ready to burst.

  His other self looked alive, while Asad was his own ghost, haunting from an unseen otherworld.

  He fumbled onto his hands and knees and reached toward the hole in reality, but stopped just short of touching it. Just short of making contact with the prickle and charge and pull of a vacuum on the other side, waiting to be filled.

  No—the vacuum wasn’t on the other side. It was inside. Inside him. Empty. Lonely. Hungry. While this other Asad?

  Looked like he’d never known a lonely, hungry day in his life.

  Asad’s mouth filled with wetness, tasting of spit and snot, his nose thick and tacky on every gasping breath, and a hot wet burn came down in a blurry shield over his eyes. What the fuck had he done wrong? What the fuck was he being punished for, to be born on this side of the cracks? Was this purgatory, when he’d never even committed the original sins of a broken world and all his crimes were the small, private misdemeanors of a greedy and wanting soul?

  He spilled out a rough sob, letting his hand fall. The other Asad didn’t respond, didn’t even notice, kept humming and bobbing his head along to whatever played through his earbuds. Those from the other side never saw through. The eyes only went one way, like some kind of fucking gift for people from the shadow-side, as if it could ever make up for everything that had gone so catastrophically awry.

  He had to close it. He had to close the fucking crack and seal the worlds off from each other, because he couldn’t stand to look at this. To see himself, the self he should have been, content and glowing with serenity, bristling with something like eager anticipation. He had all of Asad’s little tics, when he was nervous and excited: knotting and unknotting the earbud cord between his fingers, smiling to himself for no reason and then forcibly schooling his face back to neutral calm, sitting all the way forward on the edge of his seat, so fucking familiar that for a heartbeat Asad was there, the springy couch cushion under his ass, and he imagined the room smelled like sandalwood and something comforting and sweet, like sugar cookies.

  He trembled, and dragged himself to his feet; he had to spread his legs wide to stay upright, and braced his soles flat against the floor. With shaking hands, he brushed off the clumps of fuzzy dust sticking to the legs of his jeans, then spread his arms with his fingers splayed. His palms tingled, his fingertips buzzing. This was the tricky part, the scary part, when he was too small for a crack this big and he would have to draw off some of the energy charging its edges to power the runes. Shadow defined its boundaries—where bright li
ght ended, and past the light spread the darkened room that fit his world. The hole was oblong, cutting a floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall diagonal with tapered top and bottom points, a ripped sword-slash in the curtain of reality. He touched the rippling air to one side of the tear, and sucked in a breath as concussive shocks slammed through him, electric fists beating at his chest and trying to crack his ribs.

  The stairwell door opened at his back.

  He whirled. Those pounding shocks stopped, leaving him gasping. No one there. The door was closed, just as he’d left it—but he’d heard it, echoing up from down the stairs, followed by steps drawing closer and closer. He still heard those steps, the sound muted and wrong, coming through cotton.

  Coming through the rift.

  The steps grew louder. An easy, casual stride, drawing so close he sensed their presence right in front of him, then passing through and leaving behind a chill, a strange impression of displacement. Then another boy stepped into view, in the room through the rift. He was tall, taller than Asad, with shoulders so broad and a waist and body so narrow he didn’t fit together quite right, but his grace and loping stride made it work. He wore braids down his back in black ropy tangles, and the lamplight made his deep brown skin glow like he’d rolled in gold dust and come up shining. He wore a shirt with the sleeves ripped off and paint splatters slashed across ripped black fabric, and carried a backpack over his shoulder.

  A backpack he tossed on the couch as he crossed the room to the other Asad, gripped his hands, pulled him to his feet, and kissed him.

  Asad’s heart tried to beat as he watched the other boy’s lips press against lips that were his own but weren’t; as he watched full thick plush mouths meld together with a sighing sweetness that said they’d done this again and again and it never got old, only familiar and breathless and perfect. His other self twined his arms around the tall, braided boy’s neck, and Asad shivered, his mouth pulsing in strange ways. He touched his lips, pressed down on them until they gave as they must be giving underneath the strange boy’s kiss, and felt something he’d never known before curling in the pit of his stomach and sinking its hooks into him from the inside.

  The boys on the other side of the rift pulled apart with a faint sound, the dampness of a seal breaking, and Asad’s other self smiled—a smile made of lazy things and wonder and bright breathlessness.

  “Avondre,” he said. “Hey. Thought you’d never get back.”

  Avondre. Asad mouthed the name; it became a flower, blooming on his tongue.

  Avondre laughed and settled his hands on the other Asad’s hips. He had a kind of slow drawl, not quite southern but still as if molasses had a sound, dripping and sugary. “Moms let you up here?”

  “I sweet-talked my way through.”

  “Bullshit. More like she too damn tired to argue with your shit.”

  The other Asad leaned into Avondre, looking up at him with his eyes glittering with unvoiced laughter. “Think she knows by now, Von.”

  “Knowing and being okay with us locked up here together ain’t the same thing.”

  “We ain’t locked up together.” The other Asad brushed his lips to Avondre’s. “We just together. That’s all.”

  Together.

  Asad sucked in an awful, braying cry, drowning and choking on wet runny salt. Together. Life had fucking traded that, that being, that togetherness, for the eyes, for the sight, for a duty to set right something he’d never fucking set wrong in the first place, but now he knew the gift for what it was.

  A goddamned curse.

  A curse to have to sit here and watch this, and know it could never be his.

  His other self and Avondre kissed once more, lingering, slow, as innocent as if they’d never touched original sin, never had to atone.

  Asad scrambled to his feet, clambered away from the crack in the universe, and threw himself down the stairs on clumsy steps. Out into the night. Away from that.

  Where he wouldn’t have to see the wordless thing he’d always craved given form, and locked worlds away.

  Forever out of his reach.

  4

  He’d stopped sobbing by the time he hit the bus stop on the corner of Callender and Blue Hill, but what followed wasn’t much better: this hollow husked-out rawness, as if he’d been opened like a pumpkin and had all his good soft parts scooped out. He sank down on the bus stop bench and buried his face in his hands.

  He’d left the crack. Left it open.

  But he couldn’t go back there. Not right now.

  Maybe not ever.

  Twenty minutes later he was still there, staring at his feet, when Tarif came strolling up Callender, kicking pebbles and flapping his jacket with his hands in his pockets and whistling fit to whistle down Dixie. He had a shit-eating grin on, his mouth red like he’d been doing something, and Asad kind of wanted to hate him because everyone had someone, while Asad only got to watch.

  But he scrubbed at his face and sniffled back hard, and tried not to look like he’d been crying for half an hour, curled over his thighs and pressing his face into his knees. Tarif came swinging in, a big black bird touching down for a landing, arms flapping, voice large and loud and brassy as joyous screeching music.

  “You ain’t gonna believe my night,” Tarif said. “How’d it go, squeak? You finish the bl—” Then he stopped, his smile vanishing. He stared at Asad. “God damn. You look like shit. You okay?”

  “No,” Asad answered without thinking, and immediately regretted it.

  Tarif plunked down on the bench next to him. “Fuck. Something happen? You hurt?”

  Not where you can see.

  He stared down at his hands—at his old man’s hands, weathered and worn, and tried to remember he was only seventeen. Then he shook his head, swallowing back the bitterness sitting on his tongue like cough medicine.

  “Nothing happened,” he said. “Nothing came through. I’m okay. Just…just saw some bad shit on the other side. That’s all.”

  Tarif whistled through his teeth. “That fucking sucks. I once saw this dog get hit by a car, and I couldn’t stop it.”

  “I remember. You cried for a week.”

  “Man, I don’t cry.” Tarif hunched his shoulders, then snorted. “…yeah. I cried.” He bumped his elbow to Asad’s. “Was it something like that?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.” But Asad said nothing else. It was his secret, his longing, his ache curled up in a little knotted kernel inside him. He scrubbed at his nose one more time, then stood. “I’ll be okay. We gonna be late for school. Block’s not done. We can check it on the way.”

  He stepped off briskly, before Tarif could protest. And he put up with his brother’s babbling, his whispers about Shawna, Shawna as if worshipping with words and tonguing her name, as they cut down Blue Hill and circled back up Floyd, stopping to fetch their backpacks where they’d left them inside the foyer of the apartment building. The whole time Tarif didn’t notice that crackling, that pull, that surge. Maybe because it wasn’t meant for him. Maybe because it was meant for Asad, and only Asad.

  It was his other life, his problem to fix, and he’d failed.

  He’d come back after school. After homework, before sunup, when Gam and Tarif were in bed. He’d fix everything. He’d close the crack.

  He would.

  But he wondered if, when Boston was swallowed up, he’d even have a second left to realize, This was all my fault.

  5

  In school they learned about time as a function of gravity, about singularities, about how sometimes a rift was similar to a singularity and had the same effects on its local environment, on a smaller scale. Asad tried to pay attention, but couldn’t stop thinking about the crack. So big it could easily spread; they did that, once they fixed in place. They fed on themselves and opened wider and wider, greedily eating more and more of the world until they hit some break point and entire chunks of reality popped out of existence.

  Soon. He’d fix it soon. Just a few hours. He d
idn’t have to hold out long. A little while longer, and he would shut the door on that liar’s hope. That liar’s hope that someone like Avondre would ever look at him with golden lamplight in his eyes and his lips a full sweet smile, just for Asad.

  He was in the wrong world. The wrong universe. The wrong timeline.

  Shadow-siders didn’t get to have things like that.

  Gam was in love once, he thought. I wonder if Mom loved my Dad, ’fore having folks with the eyes got too weird and he took off.

  During gym class he checked Twitter for Louisville, a quick general search across the entire network of accumulated tweets.

  The search returned zero results, as if the city hadn’t even had a name, vanished as if it never existed at all.

  6

  School let out late. Too late, and the moment his sixth period teacher let them go, Asad shoved his books into his bag and hauled ass to the door, not even slowing down when Tarif shouted his name from across the quad as he emerged from the building where the college-level students took vo-tech classes and university entrance prep courses.

  “Hey! Hey, squeak, slow the fuck down! Where you going?”

  “Home,” Asad said, and doubled his stride.

  Tarif trailed him, huffing and panting and interrogating him with every step, but Asad kept his mouth mutinously shut. He couldn’t waste breath on talking. He had to move. He was tempted to skip home, but Tarif would follow, and Gam would want to know why, so he veered off on their street and clattered up the steps into their building.

  He barely made it to their floor and to their door. Gam was waiting. Like she knew, Gam was waiting just past the door, watching them both with shrewd eyes. Asad kept his head down and brushed past her with a mumble—but she shot a hand out, barring the way. Asad drew up short, staring at his feet.

  “Tarif,” Gam said firmly, “Go to your room.”

  “But—”

  “I said go to your room, boy.” Gam snapped Tarif a look fit to freeze lava and boil glaciers. “Me and your brother, we gonna have a sit-down.”